Wilde Magic
by Zarpaulus
Summary: Nick first delved into the supernatural when he was just a young hustler getting started on the streets. He thought of it as simply another way of fleecing mammals of their hard-earned cash at first, but as he delved deeper into the mysteries he began to suspect that some of those symbols and chants actually did something.
1. Chapter 1

Nicholas P. Wilde woke to the chiming of his alarm clock and slowly began his morning rituals. He started with a shower, spray of "Musk-Away", and brewed some coffee, then he drew a rug off of a mat inscribed with a five-pointed star, made sure the top point was aligned with magnetic north and sat down in the middle. "I am Nicholas Piberius Wilde," he started to chant, "I am a fragment of the universe made sentient, and here I exert my right to my will." He unstoppered three bottles of fine powder as he continued to speak, "I acknowledge that I am a part of the greater whole as I draw upon its' power for my own benefit." He poured out a dash of powder from each of the phials into his left palm in turn, vanilla for clarity of thought, cedar for health, and a mix he'd devised of catnip soaked in anise oil. Then Nick stood up and swung his fist around, the powder streaming out in an arc roughly tracing the lines of the pentagram around him. He then sat back down and let the scented dust fall around him, the energy he'd channeled through it suffusing his body as thoroughly as the smell.

He was roused from his reverie by the ringing of his phone. Annoyed, he stepped out of the circle and checked the caller ID, seeing who it was he decided to let it go almost to voicemail before answering. Nick hit "accept" and faked a tired yawn as he answered with "Carrots, what is it?". As he listened to his partner's annoyed explanation his show of exhaustion faded away into genuine shock. "Are you serious? I'll be right there, just let me get dressed." Nick threw his uniform on with little care, wishing once again that he could know whether his "magic" actually worked or not.

Twenty minutes later Officers Hopps and Wilde were in a modestly adorned apartment sized for mammals of small-medium height. It was quickly apparent why the two of them had been called down to this scene, most of ZPD Precinct 1's officers would find themselves bent halfway over in there but Nick's ears still had a couple inches of clearance from the ceiling. "Huh, nice place," he commented. "Wonder how this might affect the rent?"

"Nick!" Judy looked crossly at her vulpine partner, "can't you show a little respect here? Somebody died." She pointed towards a forensics sloth ambling slowly towards the cordoned off center of the room.

There lay a male grey squirrel in his mid-twenties, sprawled out on the floor, still as stone. Aside from his stillness the only sign that anything was wrong were a few blood splatters soaked into the carpet next to his mouth. Otherwise he might have looked like a guy doing some morning stretches.

"I know," Nick replied, forcing himself to look at the corpse, "I was just trying to lighten the mood." In truth, he was screaming inside. He had seen dead bodies before, twenty years on the "grey" side of the law in the big city and you were going to see something eventually. Back then, he'd been able to submerge his feelings in a sort of mechanical practicality, he couldn't afford to be found around a dead body when the police arrived, but now he was finding it nigh-impossible to keep his feelings bottled up for some reason. Whether it was because he was the police now and there was no immediate crisis to focus on, or something else he couldn't say. "Any idea who he was?" He tried to change the subject.

Judy sighed audibly, "I thought you said you knew everybody?" At her partner's shrug she picked up the file the building manager had given her. "It says here his name is Bill Scrambler? Works at the river and sky docks in Rainforest District."

Nick thought about that, turning away from the body so he didn't have to look at it. "A dockworker? Surprised he could afford a place like this then." It wasn't working, even without the body right in front of him the feeling of unease continued to rise in him, only long-held habit kept him from showing his disgust now.

"The manager mentioned that he had been promoted to shift supervisor a month ago, which would be when he rented this place." Judy paused and considered. "Hmm, maybe a coworker got jealous of his promotion and poisoned him or something. What do you think, Nick?"

"I think," Nick trailed off, looking around the room. Another forensics sloth arrived through the open door, joining the two just starting to bag evidence, a few too many witnesses for what he felt coming up. "I think we should get out of these gentlemammals' way." He squeezed past into the hallway outside.

Judy followed him outside to find the fox leaning against the wall, propping himself up with one arm and breathing heavily. "You okay?"

Nick reassured himself that she was the only other one out there with him before he managed to bring himself back under control. "Yeah, yeah, I just needed to get out of that room. Something about it just felt, wrong."

His lapine partner touched his arm with a show of comforting and sympathy. "Was that the first time you've seen a dead body? I know I was horrified the first time I saw someone die."

"No," Nick replied quickly, "it wasn't the first corpse I've seen, but I didn't feel like this way that time, I haven't felt like this since…" He paused, a scene from his younger days coming to mind all of a sudden. "Never mind, we've got a job to do here and now, what's next?"

Judy rolled her eyes, getting used to her partner's habit of changing the subject whenever he got uncomfortable. "Well, the sloths over in forensics will take their time figuring out what killed Bill over there. Why don't we start looking for any friends or family of his and ask if they have any ideas?"

"Can't waste that taxpayer money just waiting now can we?" Nick replied, even as his brain started to latch onto a dark possibility that would utterly change the world he knew. _Let's hope those sloths find it was natural causes,_ he thought, _or even poison for that matter, it would be better than knowing for certain that black magic can kill._

Nick had first come into contact with the occult community of Zootopia back when he was a teenager. At first, he'd thought it was just a convenient means of scamming gullible mammals out of their money, but as he spent more time in the community he saw more and more hints that some of the silly songs and dances they performed might have real effects. A seemingly hopeless drunk becoming a teetotaler overnight might be attributed to the power of belief, but nobody had ever figured out who was informing that "psychic" who seemed to know which racing lizards would win almost half the time. And then there'd been the thing that had almost turned him away from magic altogether.

A while back, when Nick was barely into his twenties, this one moose had started shaking down the city's small-time dealers and hustlers, those without the protection of a patron like Mr. Big. After a certain fox had impulsively burned his bridges with the shrew mobster the moose was quick to find him and inform him, in no uncertain terms, that he was going to be giving over half of his earnings to him from now on or his tiny skull would be crushed underfoot. Shortly after, Nick discovered that a few of the other occultists he knew were also being victimized by this thug and he started to get an idea.

He hadn't been planning to kill the guy, neither had most of the other six practitioners he'd convinced to take part in the whole thing, all he'd planned to do when they tied a tuft of the moose's fur (obtained at great personal risk) to a crude effigy and stuck pins in both the feet was to lame him, at least temporarily. However, as the chant had reached its climax and Nick plunged the needles into the doll's feet he had felt this strange and unsettling feeling circulate around the room and into the doll, leaving an immaterial taint lingering in the air.

The next morning it was found that the moose had stumbled and fallen, his antlers catching on an overhang and wrenching his neck into an unnatural position that severed his spine. Terrified at what he had possibly done, Nick had dropped his psychic act and dumped out his supply of love potions and stuck to conventional scams for nearly six months. However, after running on his "natural" charm nearly ran him into bankruptcy Nick started performing daily rites of charisma on himself and slowly built himself back up. But up until now he half believed that it was simply a boost in confidence that helped him, he wasn't too sure anymore.

As Judy was compiling a list of people who knew William Scrambler on the car's computer, Nick was busy digging around in the trash that had accumulated in the door's side compartment over the time the two of them had used the vehicle. Eventually, his partner glanced over to see what he was doing.

"Oh?" Nick said quickly as he heard the bunny about to ask him what was going on. "I just thought this car could use a bit of cleaning out is all. We haven't done anything to get rid of all the old bug-burger wrappers and stuff from the last couple of stake-outs you know."

Judy looked at him suspiciously. "Nick, every time we need to clean the slightest bit of grime off of a piece of evidence you make me do it. What makes you willing to get your paws dirty now?"

The fox shrugged, "well, I guess maybe I feel like I should just be doing something. I mean, a mammal actually died, not even Bellwether sunk so low as to murder somebody." As he was talking he continued to sort through the assorted detritus until he found what he was looking for, a pair of wire twist-ties from this one sandwich place they'd eaten at a couple of months ago. "I'm going to go take this stuff out now, okay?" Before Judy could say anything more Nick swept up a pawful of trash with the two twist-ties and started walking out towards a dumpster on the far side of the parking lot. As he was walking, he tied the ends of the two twists together so that they formed a rough circle, after dumping his admittedly small pawful of garbage he started to smooth out the plastic-coated wire circle as discreetly as he could manage.

Once he'd reached the car, walking as slowly as he could manage without suspicion, Judy printed out a list of names and addresses. "C'mon, I've got his previous address and last three employers already, let's go already!" Nick sighed and slipped the twist-tie circle under his shirt, pressing it against the fur of his chest in a place where he hoped it wouldn't shift too much.

The two officers drove around the city for the next couple of hours, the prior landlord wasn't much help, very few of his tenants stayed longer than they needed to and only three of his current tenants had been neighbors to Scurrier. Questioning them had taken an hour and been completely fruitless, they barely even remembered him as it so happened. They moved on to his employers at the skydocks in Rainforest district. After questioning a dozen different dockworkers under his supervision Nick decided they were getting nowhere. "Carrots, we need to narrow the list down somehow," he said after three hours of talking to clueless dockworkers who clearly had no idea that their supervisor had kicked the bucket, even while some of them weren't too unhappy at his demise.

"You have any suggestions on how?" Judy retorted.

"Yes, actually." He found the manager again and asked him "any of your employees come in late or something lately?"

"Hmm," the manager considered. "That would normally be up to a supervisor to keep track of. Maybe I can get someone with admin access to open his account for us."

"And how long is that going to take?" Judy asked.

The manager shrugged, "depends on how long it takes for IT to get around to it." He then pulled his phone out and began shouting into it, presumably at someone in their technology department.

Judy raised an eyebrow at her vulpine partner. He looked back and retorted "still looks like a better use of our time." As the manager attempted to negotiate with the IT geeks for their requested information, both Nick and Judy's phones chimed with messages received. The coroner had completed a preliminary autopsy on Bill's corpse and then emailed his findings to them.

"Pulmonary edema?" Nick read, "you ever hear about anything like that toots?"

The bunny selected the words in the email and searched for them online. "It says here it's fluid in the lungs, usually leaking in through the aortic membranes." She scrolled down the page a little further, "it can be caused by a bunch of different things apparently. High blood pressure, near-drowning, smoke inhalation, some chemicals…"

Nick listened as she continued to rattle off things that could have caused their vic to die on the physical side, and thought about the possible metaphysical cause. To his knowledge, most magic was elemental in nature and most practitioners specialized in a single element, it sounded like a water spell could have done it in this case. Often, practitioners specialized in an element that was related to their species, so if it was a water spell the odds were that it was performed by an aquatic species of some sort. But on the other hand he was an air specialist and it would be difficult to tie foxes to air in any meaningful way, and the group curse he'd possibly performed had been a void spell in any case.

The fox was roused from his contemplations of black magic by the manager pulling up the employee files and pointing to one in particular. "Dan Loghorn, beaver, called in sick yesterday and today, how's that look to you?"

Nick hovered the cursor over the time-off request and a note popped up reading "flare-up from that thing last year." Nick looked over at the manager again, "mind if I take a look at what happened last year?" Without waiting for an answer the fox scrolled down the record until he found a set of sick days taken close to a year prior and opened the notes from those entries.

"Drowning?" Judy pointed at the note. "He almost drowned in a accident and he went back to work in three days?"

"Yeah," the manager replied. "You earn personal time hour by hour as you work, company policy. He just didn't have enough accrued."

"Hey, carrots," Nick pointed at a rejected request for additional personal time, "take a look at this." The note attached to the request gave a list of medical conditions that Loghorn had apparently tried to use to justify asking for more time off than he had earned up to that point. At the top of the list read "acute pulmonary edema."

"That's an odd coincidence, isn't it?" Judy considered. "I'm thinking we should go give Mr. Loghorn a visit, don't you?"

Her vulpine partner grinned, but outside her field of view he nervously adjusted the improvised circle he'd placed under his shirt.

As the two of them drove over to Dan Loghorn's place of residence Nick remembered something he'd read in one of the books he'd "borrowed" for more ideas on how to seem more authentic to mammals who believed in magic and had a fair amount of cash on them. The book had included a chapter on how to better attune oneself with an element, it recommended spending several months, years even, gradually exposing one's body and mind to the element. But it had also hinted at a possible "fast-track" to attunement, some mammals, the book had claimed, had developed a greater affinity for magic of a particular element after near-death experiences involving the element in some way. Pyromancers with third-degree burns, victims of landslides buried alive came out with an instinctive knowledge of feng shui, and drowning survivors became adept at water magic.

Nick hadn't thought it would be worthwhile to sit naked on a windy mountaintop for a few months, meditating for days at a time, or let himself get struck by lightning just to scam some gullible college kids or superstitious grannies. But if almost drowning gave you the ability to make some mammal drown on his own body fluids on dry land he could almost see the appeal.

"There it is." Judy pointed to a complex of hemispherical lodges floating in the artificial lake in Meadow district. Modern updates of the traditional log and mud dwellings beavers had been making ever since prehistoric days.

Nick looked around the complex, there were a distinct shortage of gangplanks or piers leading out to the lodges. "You know, just because I can swim doesn't necessarily mean I'll enjoy it." And he especially had no intention of swimming in the home of a murderous water sorcerer.

"Yeah, it would probably be a bad idea to hang out in that water once that storm gets here anyways." At Judy's comment Nick glanced upwards at the sky, he'd been too preoccupied with potential occult doom to notice the thunderstorm creeping over from the Rainforest district. Judging from the giant lightning rod planted in the ground just a few yards off such storms weren't an uncommon occurrence. "We'll call him on that intercom." Judy started off towards a panel on an adjustable raised dais near the water's edge.

She depressed the button for Loghorn's unit and after a minute a gruff and irritated sounding voice answered. "Go away. I'm sick."

"This is Officers Hopps and Wilde of the Zootopia Police Department." The bunny cop intoned clearly. "We were wondering if you would be willing to answer a few questions."

There was a brief pause before the occupant answered. "Judith Laverne Hopps and Nicholas Piberius Wilde?"

A shudder ran down Nick's spine as he heard his full name spoken. Many rituals required the use of a name that the target responded to. Thinking quickly he pressed the intercom and replied "no, we're the other Officer Hopps and Wilde." Enough ambiguity not to satisfy the naming rules he'd read about, while also giving his partner no reason to suspect anything unusual.

Judy, thinking it just another of her partner's attempts at being witty, responded instead with, "yes, that's us. Will you come out?"

"All right, just a second." There was a shuffling sound and the sound cut off. Over by one of the lodges a dark shape entered the water and began swimming for shore.

A drop of rain fell on the fox's shoulder, glancing towards it he commented, "not a moment too soon. I was wondering if I'd need to stand out here in the rain or any-" he broke off as sixty pounds of semi-aquatic rodent lunged out of the water and tackled his partner to the ground.

Nick was frozen in place for a second as Judy struggled to get the considerably heavier mammal off of her. For some reason he hadn't expected some mammal who had used black magic to kill to resort to simple claw and tooth. As he was trying to process the situation he noticed that the beaver had grabbed onto his partner's whiskers and was attempting to pull them out.

Finally realizing what was happening, Nick reared back and pounced on Dan Loghorn. His slight build didn't carry enough force to completely dislodge the burly beaver, but it gave Judy an opening to wedge her strong legs beneath him. Both the beaver and the fox, claws digging into the rodent's thick hide, went tumbling towards the water. Spotting a translucent hair grasped in Loghorn's far paw, Nick reached for it but his reach brought his arm close to the beaver's head and he sunk his long incisors into it. The shock and pain caused Nick to lose his grip and Loghorn took advantage of the opportunity to slip back into the water, his home turf.

"Nick!" Judy rushed over to her partner's side and examined his wounded arm. "How bad is it?"

Nick winced as he held his injured limb. "Never mind me, it's just a flesh wound. Worry about yourself, he took your whisker with him."

"Why would that be more serious?" Judy retorted. "We need to get you to a hospital and some backup fast." The rabbit whipped out her radio and called up the station. "This is Hopps, we need backup and an ambulance, Officer Wilde is -ack!" Judy suddenly started coughing madly.

Nick wrenched the radio from her paw and spoke into it rapidly. "Both of us are injured, get some of those hippos over to the beaver lodges in the Meadow district along with an ambulance prepared to treat pulmonary edema." As he spoke Nick felt the improvised ward under his shirt begin to burn. "Possibly two cases of it." He amended before dropping the radio and lurching back to the intercom. Nick pressed the intercom button again. "Daniel G. Loghorn, do you have any idea what you're doing?"

There was a brief sound of muffled chanting in the background before the beaver replied, his voice now sounding almost maniacal. "I'm taking out the ZPD's two finest officers so they can't stop me from destroying the company, that's what I'm doing. Soon you'll be drowning in your own blood."

Nick snorted in feigned amusement. "You think you're the only wannabe sorcerer in Zootopia? I've got a ward protecting me from your silly curse." Though, even as he said it he felt the circle of twist-ties growing hotter and hotter under his shirt.

On the ground nearby Judy turned over towards Nick, trying to say something but only a sharp cough coming out. The intercom spoke again, "oh, sounds like your bunny friend isn't so protected. As soon as the curse is done with her I'm sure its' full power will be enough to overwhelm your ward. I've got your blood, Nicholas P. Wilde!"

The improvised ward grew hotter under Nick's shirt, he knew that the beaver was right, blood was probably the most powerful of synecdoches available. If Loghorn was skilled enough to set up a ritual this quickly he might even follow Judy before the ZPD's hippos could arrive and bust their way in. He pulled his finger away from the button and a glimmer of hope sprang up as he noticed the red staining his brownish-orange fur. "I've got your blood too, Daniel G. Loghorn."

Frantically, he looked around for things he might use to form a counterspelling ritual, water, lodge-domes, the police SUV, Judy sputtering on the ground, there didn't seem to be anything to use. As the rain began to fall around them Nick felt despair creeping in on him again, there was no way he could improvise an effective rite quickly enough. But then, inspiration struck as a lightning bolt hit the pole raised not 20 feet away. Lightning was a product of air ionization, his element, the fence around the lightning rod was square-shaped, but that could be close enough to a circle for his purposes. Quickly he scampered for the fence and propelled himself over, thanking the academy's drill instructor for making him work on that so hard.

He stepped up to the lightning rod and touched it gingerly. A static charge jumped out and made him pull back in pain, before he remembered what he had to do. He slapped his beaver-blood stained paw on the pole and began to chant, ignoring the residual heat searing his palm. "Forces of nature I command you to follow the blood of Daniel G. Loghorn and smite him." The rain poured down around him, soaking the fox even as the wire circle under his shirt burned, he repeated his chant with no further effect.

Nick glanced over at Judy, and saw her cough one last time before lying still. The ward burned even hotter and he felt his rage and fury rising towards the beaver who had hurt her. He channeled that rage into his chant as he yelled out "Forces of nature, unleash your fury on the royal asshole Daniel G. Loghorn!"

Lightning struck the pole again and it jumped into the four-foot tall fox clinging to it. As untold thousands of watts flowed into Nick's body he caught a momentary glimpse of the threads binding reality together. Minute strands flowed outward from the blood on his right paw and the wound on his left arm, coalescing into cables that went off towards the lodge of the beaver black magician. They weren't just visible, he could smell them as scent trails, hear their frequencies, almost touch them as tangible items, and their magnetism drew his head away. All five primary senses perceived them at once. Summoning up the last of his will, Nicholas Piberius Wilde threw his other arm towards the one who wronged him and his partner and the lightning leapt off his finger at the lodge. The dome exploded as he collapsed to the ground.

Judy lurched and sprang up to her feet, a sudden bout of energy overcoming the lingering choke in her chest cavity. She saw electricity arc over her partner before he fell. "No!" Instinctively, she ran to aid her partner, gasping and coughing as she went.

She vaulted the fence easily and landed next to him, the fur of his forepaws was blackened and his chest wasn't moving. "Nick, come on," she grabbed the scorched remnants of his uniform and tried to haul him away from the lightning rod. She couldn't hear a heartbeat. "Oh, please, no." She pleaded as she tried to remember CPR. Judy pumped her comparatively small fists on the fox's chest, forced air into his nostrils, tried everything she could remember. She was rewarded on the third try when Nick coughed once and his heart restarted.

"Thank God." Judy sighed in relief as she let herself collapse onto her partner's chest, sirens approaching. As she lay there she began to wonder, how had Loghorn made her cough like that? What were Nick and the murderer talking about when they spoke about "wards" and blood and stuff? How did that lightning bolt jump from the pole and Nick to Loghorn's lodge? She resolved to ask him what was going on as soon as they were both out of the hospital.


	2. Chapter 2

Nick drifted through a featureless haze, there were faint signs of the landscape below him, but it was hard to make out through the grey fog that seemed to pervade the place. He was dimly aware of someone shouting his name, off in the distance, he knew that probably meant something, but his attention was tied up in the view immediately before him now. It seemed like the fox was surrounded by threads of connection, everything having a link to everything else in reality. He understood now how the laws of synecdoche worked, and how he might find links other than the physical, if only he had the time.

A flurry of motion in the strings off to the side drew Nick's attention briefly. A mass of threads was unraveling, the multi-dimensional strands uncoiling from one another and snapping off into the distance, to the other ends of the connections he presumed. In the center of the disturbance lay a sprawled form in the vague shape of a beaver. As Nick watched, he felt himself drawn towards the mass by the arm, it was almost too late before he realized that something was wrong and tried to pull back, but a second tangle began to manifest itself from the threads breaking off and yanked on a thin thread linking him to it.

We both die together. The thought seemed to resonate along the connecting strand, not merely words but images of Nick and Loghorn collapsing simultaneously. Feelings of cold and death. The new tangle formed a vaguely mammalian shape, starting to ensnare the unbroken threads in its grasp, but also losing threads, it seemed to be struggling to maintain its shape. Nick, beginning to realize what was happening, stared down at his right paw.

Slender strands streamed out from the bloodstains on his paw to tie together into a cable that extended towards the tangle. Nick tried again to drag along the ground to keep from being pulled in but the earth offered no resistance. It was apparent now that Loghorn's ghost intended to take his own disembodied spirit into the great beyond with him, and he was helpless to stop it.

"Nick, come on!" At the sound of someone calling his name again the fox felt a tug at his chest, pulling him in the opposite direction as the coalescing ghost. Looking back, he saw another tangle of threads, most of them connecting with him, with a companion that stood over its' prone shape, beating on its chest frantically. One frayed but thick cord linked Nick's chest to the companion knot, and it was pulling him almost as strongly as Loghorn's.

Nick looked at the slowly disintegrating spirit hovering over its dying body, then back to his own form. He didn't hesitate for more than a second before pulling on the strands leading back to his body.

No, the ghost leapt towards him from the corpse it had vacated. Threads breaking as it went. You die with me!

The fox looked back at his paw and saw that the thin strands linking him to the vengeful spirit were snapping as well, the cord gradually losing its grip on him. Sorry, he thought back. It would seem I have another date scheduled. With one last pull he wrenched himself free of the sinister connection and leapt back into his own mortal form.

The world of threads and connections faded away as Nick sputtered and coughed, kneeling over him, his lapine partner breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh thank God." Judy said before letting herself fall over his chest. As the sirens drew closer, Nick thought that maybe now would be an opportune time for a rest and let the EMTs lift him up onto the stretcher and into the back of the ambulance.

After an indeterminate period of dreamless sleep Nick was awakened by a sliver of sunlight poking him in the eye. Shrugging groggily he found that he couldn't rotate his head fully, annoyed, he looked around.

He seemed to be lying in a hospital bed, his arms wrapped in bandages and held in traction, while a chest compression restricted his breathing. A heart monitor beeped steadily next to him, speeding up and getting louder as he woke. On the couch by the window a bundle of blankets raised one long grey ear, and then to Nick's grateful surprise his partner rose up off the sofa, looking concerned.

Nick managed to gasp out, "not getting rid of me that easily little bunny," before Judy leapt over to his side and wrapped her arms around his neck.

She breathed one word into his neck, "Nick…", before she realized what she was doing and straightened up. "So, how are you feeling?"

"Well," the fox started. "I'm partially in traction, I have to pee like a fish out of water, and a grey fuzzball seems to be trying to strangle me." At that comment Judy paused, seemed to consider the situation for a minute, then socked him in the muzzle. "Ow," Nick exclaimed in surprise, "what was that for?"

"A few things," Judy replied. "First, for that dumb comment. Second, for making me wait here in this crummy hospital room for four days waiting to see if you'd wake up…"

"Wait," the immobile fox interrupted, "I've been out for four days?" 

Judy shrugged, "closer to a week actually. The doctors wouldn't let me in until they were sure I wouldn't cough up blood again. But you didn't let me finish." She pushed down harder on Nick's chest, causing him to sputter. "Third, you didn't tell me what the hell was going on there?!"

Nick was reminded of the time Judy had caught him on tax evasion, he'd been trapped then, just as he was now. Even discounting the physical bindings currently present. He had no idea how Judy would react if he claimed to be a wizard or something, most mammals in the city either reacted with skepticism or asked if he could do a paw reading, but his partner was a good country bunny, he hadn't even heard her swear until just recently. He thought maybe he could try changing the subject, distract her until he could think of something more permanent to do. "Hey, shouldn't there be a doctor in here now or something?"

His lapine partner sighed and walked over to an intercom set in the wall. "Hello," she said into it, "room 373, Dr. Lighthoof told me to call when anything changed in here. Well, he's awake." Ten minutes later a deer in a lab coat came in to take Nick's temperature and examine his injuries for signs of infection.

While the doctor was doing that, Nick started mentally chanting a silent mantra. Judith Laverne Hopps, you need to forget what happened, it's for the best. You don't want to follow this trail. Judith Laverne Hopps, you need to forget… He could feel his awareness flowing down the threads that linked him to the younger bunny, but something held him back, kept him just short of entering her mind. Then the doctor lifted the bandages over Nick's chest and he completely lost his train of thought at the sight.

A line of jagged pink scar tissue came down from his left arm, arced down towards his stomach and formed a circle-shape, then continued up towards his right arm. "Pretty nasty things, lightning strikes." The deer doctor, Lighthoof he thought, commented. "You're lucky it didn't fry your heart, that wire thing you had drew it away somehow, what was it anyways?"

Nick grimaced, staring at the patchwork mess of his body. "Good luck charm," he answered, improvising. He noticed that Judy was trying to look away, but had started to peep through her fingers at the discussion of his "wire-thing".

The doctor snorted, "I suppose 'good luck' is relative. You get struck by lightning and it keeps you from getting killed but paralyzes your diaphragm for several hours requiring us to put you on the ventilator for most of a day just to keep you alive." With that, he replaced the bandages and left. "Nurse will be by to replace your saline and help you use the toilet in 30 minutes, there's a call button on the nightstand."

Once they were alone again Judy hopped back up onto the side of the bed and resumed her interrogation of the helpless fox. "Okay, now are you going to tell me what was going on back there?"

"Back where?" Nick said innocently, while frantically thinking to himself forget, forget, forget, damnit!

"Back at the complex when I suddenly started coughing blood and you and Loghorn were shouting at each other about links and blood and names and stuff." Judy replied. "And then you threw a lightning bolt at his apartment."

"Welll," Nick trailed off as he thought of how to break it to her. "It was more like I re-routed a lightning bolt at him, that bolt was there already." At Judy's scowl he sighed and just said it as simply and plainly as he could manage. "Okay, fine, I know magic. Happy now?"

Judy cocked an eyebrow at him skeptically. "Magic, really? Like those Harry Porker novels?"

The vulpine scoffed at the suggestion. "Harry Porker, no, most of the time it's more like the fortune teller at the carnival whose vague and slightly cryptic predictions later appear to be somewhat accurate later on when you think about it."

"I've never heard of a fortune teller causing someone to drown on dry land or redirect a lightning bolt towards anyone." Judy retorted.

"Have you heard of the Evil Eye, Voodoo dolls, jinxes?" Nick replied. "Though actually voodoo dolls aren't really part of Vodoun, they're really a Europan thing called poppets…"

"Nick!" Judy interrupted his seque and brought him back on track. "You were saying?"

"Oh, right, lightning. Well, magic with that kind of obvious effect is very rare and difficult to pull off. You need a synecdoche, a material link to the target, and the target's true name. Loghorn was probably dunking a pair of poppets with your whisker and some of my blood into a tank of water, possibly acid, while performing an elaborate ritual he'd set up days before. While his blood stained my claws and I put it directly in contact with a live lightning rod. Which nearly killed me I might add!"

"So, what, if you had some kind of ritual prepared you might have been able to pull off that lightning thing without hurting yourself? Could just any mammal learn to kill from miles away or is there some sort of 'magic gene' or do you need to make a deal with the Devil or something first?"

Nick snorted, "deal with the Devil, no we don't have congress with the Prince of Lies or anything." Then he sobered up and started to explain more. "I suppose that anyone could learn how to perform the ritual of a killing curse, but unless they're properly attuned to the element they're employing they can't muster up the energy to actually make it work without killing themselves. Loghorn could only do it because he'd almost drowned and survived."

Judy actually looked relieved at that. "So, Loghorn had a near-death experience involving drowning so he could make other mammals drown on dry land. Am I correct?" Nick gave a slight nod. She had a thought then, terrible as it was. "Does that mean that now that you've been struck by lightning you could kill other mammals with lightning?"

Nick's face fell at that accusation. "I would much rather not, but yes, I could."

His partner's mind raced, her friend had suddenly gained a weapon, a lethal weapon. Some ZPD officers carried tasers, she knew, and those could kill if set too high for the mammal they were fired at, and claws or horns could easily be lethal at close range, but Nick could kill a mammal without even looking them in the eye now. Could she trust him with that power? And there was another disturbing thought gnawing at her, was every mammal who made it out of a near-death experience a ticking time bomb? Were there other ways to become "attuned" as Nick had said it? She had to ask. "What do you mean by 'attuned', what ways are there to become that way?"

"Well," the fox thought. "Every mammal has an affinity for magic that employs one specific element, I've got a talent for air magic for instance. The more one uses magic they have an affinity for, the more in touch with it they become, but it's normally very slow and gradual. One can become attuned to their element almost instantaneously by going through a near-death experience involving their elemental affinity, but only if it's the element they already favor. Loghorn must have had a water affinity, seeing how he was a beaver it's not that surprising," he stopped, thinking he might be sounding a bit racist. "Not that species always determines elemental affinity or anything, it's more a function of personality really. But, for some reason certain species are more likely to produce magic-users of a particular element. Anyways, the second fastest way to achieve attunement is to get in touch with your element, usually through months if not years of meditation involving exposure to and contemplation of the element." He chortled as if he'd thought of something funny. "For me, that would have involved something like sitting naked on a windy mountaintop every day, for hours at a time."

"Am I interrupting something?" A nurse was at the door, wheeling a cart in front of her. Judy motioned for her to come on in, might as well use the interruption to try and process what she'd just heard.

While Nick was having his needs attended to, Judy left the room to afford him some privacy and see to her own needs. As she was coming back from the vending machines with a carrot and alfalfa bar she wondered if she could trust her partner. When they first met he'd convinced her that a fully-grown fennec in an elephant costume was his son, yes, but in the months since the Bellwether case they'd grown close and to her knowledge he hadn't even lied to her. Heck, he'd only made a token effort to deny the events of the previous week. But now, she knew that Nick had been hiding strange and powerful abilities she didn't understand the whole time she'd known him, and when he revealed them he'd used them to kill a mammal. And worse, the only other mammal with such powers had tried to use them to murder her.

Judy stopped in the middle of the hallway, bar halfway to her mouth. Loghorn had been trying to kill her when Nick killed him. It had taken the threat of death to his partner for Nick to kill another mammal, he'd been defending her. Perhaps she could give him the benefit of the doubt for now, but she needed to know more about what he was capable of before she could fully trust him again, after all he must have neglected to tell her for some reason…

Judy remembered asking Nick if he got his powers through a deal with the devil. Of course, he wouldn't have felt comfortable telling his country bunny partner that he practiced the pagan arts, and knowing how touchy mammals could get about religion she'd never brought up the subject of faith. Whatever she believed though, Judy knew that her knowledge of the real world was somewhat lacking, she finished up her snack and headed straight for Nick's room.

The fox was just then being helped back into his bed, he was cautiously moving his bandaged arms, trying to determine his range of movement. He couldn't move them very far, the bandages restrained his movement too much, but at least they weren't in traction. "Oh, hey there bunny," he said, spotting her, "nurse says they might change these things out for something more flexible tomorrow, get some of my fingers free." Nick looked at Judy, trying to gauge her expression. "Did you want to keep talking then?"

His partner sighed, "I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt for now, I know it was extenuating circumstances when you killed Loghorn, but I don't know what else you can do. What you might have fewer qualms… err what spells you prefer to perform."

Nick hesitated, he could see that he'd need to sell her on the idea of working with a practitioner, and he didn't have the time to prepare any supernatural assistance. He'd need to rely on the mundane tricks of the trade. "Well," he started, thinking of ways he could use his air magic to aid in their police work. "I could perform divinations to read what's coming in the wind, or trace a fugitive or missing mammal through supernatural scent trails."

"That would have been useful back in the Otterton case!" Judy interrupted, "how come you didn't offer to help that way then?"

The fox froze, he'd stumbled into a sticking point there, he had to play damage control now. "Well, for one thing, my use of the spell wasn't too reliable back then, past experience suggested that the mundane methods were more effective. Though if I'm attuned now I might be able to pull it off more successfully if I tried again." Maybe now he could insert some levity, "for another, I wasn't too interested in helping you succeed at the time and if I did attempt a tracking spell you would have thought I was stalling again."

"I suppose that's true," Judy conceded. "But what did you do with magic if you couldn't make tracking work very often?"

"Well," Nick struggled to work it in a way that sounded reasonable. "Air magic like I specialize in mostly works with the mind, if you take time to perform a rite you can influence what someone believes or remembers to a significant degree, but that's not very useful to a hustler." He emphasized the last part. "The types of cons I specialized in were spur of the moment things, too quick to leave the mark much time to think, much less cast a charm on them. No, more often I put charms on myself, to improve my clarity of thought and lend myself a sort of "aura of credibility"."

"Aura of credibility?" The bunny looked rather incredulous at him.

"Yeah," Nick replied, "I cast that on myself and for the next day or two I can sell you used pawpsicle sticks. So long as it's at least somewhat plausible I mean."

Or convince a rookie cop that your fennec partner-in-crime is your child who wants to be an elephant when he grows up, Judy thought to herself. "Didn't seem to work on the ice cream guy though."

The fox snorted, "well, some minds are more rigid than others. Just how it is."

"Right," Judy thought out loud. "So, if air magic is associated with the mind, what about the other elements?"

"Oh, well, earth is air's opposite, associated with the body, if you wanted to be stronger or to weaken an enemy you'd use earth magic. While water and fire represent the methodical and passionate, respectively. Water can help you accomplish something slow and steadily, while fire magic tends to be fast but hard to control." He considered for a second. "You saw that in how long it took for Loghorn to kill us, right? While lightning comes from the air but it has traits of fire as well. In a more benign sense you could use water to help change bad habits, while fire is used in love spells."

"Okay then," Judy replied. "Then, is all magic based on those elements, or is there some sort of non-elemental magic as well?"

Nick sighed. "Actually, there's a fifth element, some call it "aether" or "heaven", I prefer to call it "void". Void covers most forms of magic that would be hard to pigeonhole into any of the others." He thought, "there's some other interpretations of the elemental system, one Eastern tradition uses earth, fire, water, wood, and metal for instance, but I'm not too familiar with that one."

"And you mostly use air magic, is that right?" Nick nodded, Judy continued. "One last question for now, what was that circle thing under your shirt and what did it do?"

The fox grimaced, holding a bandaged paw above the circle-shaped scar above his diaphragm. "It was an improvised ward I made from a pair of twist-ties after I realized that the killer was using magic. Circles are containers for magic, they redirect the energy in an endless circuit or something. Most of the time you need to be standing or sitting in the middle of a circle to perform a spell and a circular amulet or totem can protect you from curses. It got a little hot when Loghorn tried to curse me but I wasn't harmed by it, and the circle kept that lightning from killing me, you heard."

Judy processed that last bit of information and came to a conclusion. "Once you get out of here, we're going jewelry shopping."


	3. Chapter 3

Nick winced at the sound of the saw cutting the plaster from his arms and torso. He knew that logically it was no harm to him, the doctor knew what he was doing, but it still made him uneasy. When the saw stopped its' whining grinding the fox cautiously turned to look at the skin underneath his cast as it was peeled away. At the first sight of the jagged pink flesh running up his arm he instinctively turned away, only to mentally chastise himself a second later, he'd have to face it sooner or later.

The scar led all the way down from the palm of his right hand to his shoulder, then veered off towards his stomach. Just off-center of his belly the scar formed a ring-shape, from his improvised ward. It then ran up his left arm to the tip of his index finger, fractal branches coming off as it ran across.

He'd been marked, marked by his element, marked by power, marked by grasping too far too quickly. Nick was reminded of the old stories of the witch's mark. One of the books he'd fumbled through once had speculated that they were inspired by tattoos worn by some secret society of old pagans. But now, he suspected they were scars.

The fox barely paid attention to the doctor giving him instructions on how to take care of his injuries out of the hospital, he was too caught up in his own thoughts. He was thinking of what he had done, what he had become, what he would need to do next. Now that he knew for sure that there were sorcerers out there who could kill without much trace he would need to establish some sort of protective measures for himself and Judy, if not the entire precinct, somehow.

Once they had finished wrapping the bandages around Nick and he had thrown on a shirt for the first time in days his partner came in. She was in one of her civilian outfits, a purple striped shirt and tights ensemble that he had seen her wear a hundred times before, but there was something different about her this time.

Usually, Judy was warm and inviting towards the fox she worked with. Sure, they'd had that initial set of misunderstandings but now they were thick as the thieves they caught together. Now, however, she was on constant alert, her eyes darting around the room, returning to Nick every few microseconds. And then there was her new choice in jewelry.

Nick decided that the best course of action might be to distract her and defuse the situation a bit. He opened with a joke, "Hey Fluff! Surprised to see you here already, did Chief Buffalo Butt fire you yet?"

Judy scowled at her partner's comment. "Don't joke about things like that. You remember what he was like before the Night Howler case." She stole a glance at the marking running down his palm. "Does that still hurt?"

Nick shrugged, the scarring still throbbed dully, but nowhere near the degree it had before his pain meds had been prescribed. "Not much," he claimed. "Besides, vixens dig scars, is that true for does too?"

The bunny didn't care to dignify that with a response. But, she couldn't help herself from staring at the scars crossing the fox's body again as he stood and moved to put on a shirt. Her eyes caught on the circular scar and her hand unconsciously grasped at her new pendant. "Do those scars mean, anything… you know?" She waved a hand idly.

The fox scanned the vicinity discretely for any sign of eavesdroppers before considering how to respond. "I honestly don't know. Most of the literature I've seen suggests that this kind of dramatic exposure should amplify my ability to work air magic, but I have no idea how. Maybe these scars will channel lightning more efficiently next time or act as an insulator to give me more control. Or maybe the circle on my chest will provide superior protection from hostile magic, in any case I'd expect it to be a better protector than that piece of jewelry."

"Is there something wrong with this?" Judy asked, holding up the Celtic cross she was wearing around her neck. It was made of pewter with a braiding pattern engraved into its surface and an amethyst the shade of her eyes set in the center of the circle.

Nick shrugged, "it depends. The ring might provide better protection than that improvised thing I made out of wire. But, if we were to meet with any of my contacts in the Neopagan community and you were wearing that openly they might take offense."

The bunny cocked her head in contemplation. "Why, just because Christians burned witches a few hundred years ago?"

"Yes," Nick replied flatly. "Even though most of the mammals burned at the stake were actually Protestants or Catholics, depending on who was lighting the fire. Or simply their accuser's political rivals like in Salem."

"But, a lot of modern witches feel uncomfortable around Christians regardless." Judy fingered the cross in her paw for a minute. "I suppose I understand that. My parents would ask odd questions if they saw me wearing a star necklace, it's why I bought this one, to be honest."

"Well," Nick conceded. "There's some debate over whether the Celtic cross is actually of Christian origin or if they co-opted it from Pagans. And talismans work best if they're in contact with the fur. You could just wear it under your shirt."

Judy tugged open the neck of her shirt and slipped the pendant into the singlet she wore beneath. "Okay, if that's all taken care of now, maybe you should test your new abilities or something?"

The vulpine got up from the bed and strode towards the door. "We can do that tonight, for now I need to go back to my place and dust off some old books of mine. Then make some calls."

Judy drove Nick to his "apartment", as it were. She stared in astonishment as the fox had them stop outside a dilapidated building with boards nailed over half the windows. "You really live in there?"

Nick shrugged as he drew a small key from one of his pockets and tried the lock. "Like you have any right to comment, I've seen where you live." The doorknob turned, but it seemed to be stuck in place. "Besides, the rent's cheap and the neighbors are quiet."

"Are you sure it's rent and not a bribe to the building inspector? Pangolin Arms at least replaces their windows." Though, as Nick forced the sticky door open with his shoulder and nobody said a thing about the noise, she supposed he had a point about the neighbors.

They descended a flight of stairs to the basement, a damp place with too few windows or lightbulbs. Though Judy supposed that with his vulpine night vision the darkness wouldn't bother her partner that much. By the light of a single bulb hanging from the ceiling with a pull string Nick found his way to a door set into a small alcove and pried it open. "Here we are," he announced. "Welcome to Casa de Wilde."

To say Judy was not impressed would be an understatement. Bare concrete floor with only a couple rugs to cover it, dirty coffee maker next to a microwave and a hot plate in similar states of uncleanliness, disheveled bed in the corner... The only part of the room that seemed to have been cleaned lately was the closet with its rows of pressed shirts and pants. It wasn't the kind of place she'd expect a wizard to live in, though it made perfect sense for a two-bit con artist. She found that conclusion oddly comforting.

Nick lifted one of the rugs and revealed a small mat maybe 2 feet square, imprinted with a five-pointed star in a circle. He took a second to realign the star so that it faced a certain direction. "Magnetic north," he explained, tapping his forehead with one finger. "We foxes have our own internal compasses." The vulpine then lifted the covers draping over the side of the bed and reached underneath, leaving only his legs and tail exposed.

Despite the view Judy found herself oddly drawn towards the pentagram on the floor. It smelled strongly of her partner, as if he'd spent many an hour sitting on it, possibly before showering. And then there was this odd sensation she felt as she stepped near it, as if the air above it hung more heavily than normal.

"Oof," Judy turned back to see Nick dragging out a couple stacks of large books. "Okay, I think that's all of the least kooky ones I got my hands on back then. Think you could look up the sellers? There should still be receipts or tags in some of them still."

The bunny picked up the closest book, it was titled "Unlocking the Power Within" and showed an outline of a generic mammal with a rainbow of colors coming off of them on the cover. She couldn't help but roll her eyes at the cover and the interior illustrations of chakras and chi lines as she flipped through looking for some indication of where it had been purchased. While she was searching she noticed Nick sitting down in the middle of the pentagram rug in a lotus position. "What are you doing?" She found herself asking.

"Meditating," the fox responded. "I haven't had the opportunity to properly focus my energy since I got struck by lightning." With that he closed his eyes, swept his ears back, and started heavily and rhythmically breathing.

Judy rolled her eyes again and started flipping through the book, eventually finding a small price tag that read "Ortega's New Age and Spiritual Store." She made a note of it in her notebook and moved on to the next book, a study of traditional practices of snow leopard tribes which turned out to be from a Half-Price Books in Tundratown. She scanned a dozen more books, self-improvement guides and spellbooks, even a book on "pick-up artists" that evoked a momentary cringe, but only half of them had any indication of where they had been acquired and most of them were just used book stores.

She was just about to set down a book on the history of telepathy, not having found any information on the seller, when a small breeze lifted a page. As she watched a small slip of paper fell out from between the yellowed pages and into her hand. It listed the price of the book and the sales tax that had been paid under the less-than-indicative name of the book store, "13th Street Books." As Judy copied down the name she started to notice that more loose pieces of paper were fluttering in the breeze, odd considering their subterranean location. Her ears perked up to try and determine the origin of the airflow and found it didn't come from the room's one vent, rather it appeared to be circling around… "Nick!"

The wind momentarily accelerated, picking up several loose leaves of paper and even a couple small paperbacks as the fox's eyes shot open. He looked around at the chaos gathered around him as the breeze slowed back down to a stop. "Huh," he noted. "That's never happened before."

Judy steadied herself and started to slick back her frazzled fur. "I don't suppose that thing about the elemental connection has anything to do with it?" She asked.

Nick stood back up, brushing his shirt off. "Probably does. We should probably look up somebody who can help us figure out the ramifications of that whole thing."

"Ortega's" turned out to have been sold to a smoothie shop years ago, the used book stores probably weren't worth checking so they were left off for later. 13th Street Books on the other hand was still around though, if barely.

"I don't remember it having quite this much mildew last time I was here." Nick commented as he swung open the creaking door. The teetering shelves were stacked with piles of unsorted books, a quick glance showed that only the barest pretense of organization by subject or genre had been applied. Nobody was visible from the front door, it seemed deserted.

Judy looked around for a shelf tag that read "occult" or "paranormal" or something but there was nothing to be seen. Just endless rows of shelves, too high for either of the small mammals to look over and too rickety to risk climbing. "How did you find anything in this mess?"

The fox seemed to think about it for a minute, wandering between the stacks as he considered. "Let's see… I think I walked around for an hour or so, then I did something, what was it oh!" He dug in his pockets and drew out a short chain with a conical crystal on one end.

"Magic?" Judy inquired, looking over the chain and crystal.

"It's a pendulum," Nick explained. "A pretty common divinatory tool. Kind of like divining rods but more portable." He picked up the other end of the chain with his right hand and slowly drew it up, letting it dangle over his left palm. The crystal swung gently towards the back of the store at a slight angle and the fox started to follow it.

The two of them followed the pendulum's swings as best they could, given the lack of direct paths. More than once they were forced to stop and turn in order to go around a shelf and take directions again. After what seemed like half an hour they almost stumbled into a middle-aged goat woman. "Can I help you?" She asked, adjusting her glasses.

"Oh, no thanks." Nick said quickly. "We're just browsing." He made a show of looking over the nearby shelves, diligently examining every volume.

"Oh well, if you need me I'll be nearby." The goat walked past them, keeping her eyes firmly on Nick until she passed out of sight. Nick took the opportunity to take another reading on his pendulum but Judy thought the goat had seemed a bit suspicious and decided to follow her.

She found the goat lurking on the other side of the shelf, ear cocked in Nick's direction. Judy cleared her throat loudly for attention. "Excuse me," she said. "Do you have a problem with my partner?"

The goat stared down at her. "Child, have you seen his aura?"

Judy's ears perked up at that comment. "Is that some kind of magic thing? Do you know anything about it?"

"We each have a field around us, an aura that helps protect us from the energies of others." The goat explained. "I'm not sure if I'd call it magic per se, but I can see them if I concentrate enough. Your aura is strong, dense with your willpower, but your boyfriend's…" She paused.

"I meant we work together," Judy interjected. "We're not really…" she found herself trailing off.

"Your partner's aura is cracked." The goat said. "I've seen mammals intentionally thin their auras to let their extra senses through but there's a long gash straight through the middle of his field."

"Well, he was struck by lightning recently." Judy mentioned. "Would that do it?"

The goat considered. "Maybe. I've never seen a mammal who survived that sort of event."

"Given that this thing seems to be directing me towards you," Judy peered around the goat as she heard Nick speak up on the other side. He was holding up the pendulum again as it clearly swung towards them. "I think that perhaps we should have a chat."

"Yes, perhaps." The goat conceded. "Why don't you come over later, after the store closes. Bring whatever you need for your rites and ask for Susan Clovis." She waved a hand idly in the vague direction of the door.


End file.
